The Home Stretch

I'm nearing the end of the semester, so things have been kind of busy lately. I just need to finish a few chapters of the written work for my University 100 class and take the final to finish. In my other class, I'm down to the small group speech planning assignments. Since it's online, I don't have to worry about group meetings where only one other person shows up. It's only a 5 minute speech, so I'm more worried that I'll go over than run out of things to say. I think we have a week or so after the spring semester is officially over before the summer semester starts.

I finally went in to take my math placement test on April 1. Turns out that the testing software NVCC uses does not handle apostrophes in names, so I ended up having to use my maiden name to log in to the test.  The test went pretty smoothly after that, until I hit the tail end of the trig section and blanked on the law of the cosines. I knew I had passed the pre algebra through precalculus sections, but I was worried I didn't do well enough on my trig to get into Calc I. Without Calc I, I would not be able to take any computer science classes until the fall semester.

After I finished the test, I went to pick up my scores.  I had forgotten what day it was (April 1), so I got a little nervous when the guy looked at my print out and asked me what class I thought I had placed into.  Since he was asking, I thought I was stuck taking precalc. Then he followed that up with "Well... I hate to tell you... <insert longish pause> that you placed into Honors Calculus I, because I hate math!". I hate April Fools' Day, but I'm really glad to be done with all my placement tests.

Google Math for Girls

I wish I'd been able to do something like Expanding Your Horizons in Science and Mathematics when I was growing up. It's nice to see Google's encouraging jr high girls to pursue engineering.

Claiming His Seat

Paul still isn't old enough to sit on his own, which is why he likes sitting on the end of the couch with a pillow. He can move around without falling over, and can also watch we're doing on our laptops. He's also getting better at rolling over from his stomach to his back. He's not a big fan of tummy time still, but he just rolls over now before he gets really frustrated.

April is also National Math Awareness Month, so in honor of that, I present Cherry Pi. A classic math puzzle on congruences of prime numbers was also solved.

I also ran across Seat Guru awhile back. It's pretty nifty for determining which seat to pick in the plane and for which to avoid.